Detection of ATM germline variants by the p53 mitotic centrosomal localization test in BRCA1/2-negative patients with early-onset breast cancer

BACKGROUND: Variant ATM heterozygotes have an increased risk of developing cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes. Costs and time of sequencing and ATM variant complexity make large-scale, general population screenings not cost-effective yet. Recently, we developed a straightforward, rapid, and inexpensive test based on p53 mitotic centrosomal localization (p53-MCL) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) that diagnoses mutant ATM zygosity and recognizes tumor-associated ATM polymorphisms. METHODS: Fresh PBMCs from 496 cancer patients were analyzed by p53-MCL: 90 cases with familial BRCA1/2-positive and -negative breast and/or ovarian cancer, 337 with sporadic cancers (ovarian, lung, colon, and post-menopausal breast cancers), and 69 with breast/thyroid cancer. Variants were confirmed by ATM sequencing. RESULTS: A total of seven individuals with ATM variants were identified, 5/65 (7.7 %) in breast cancer cases of familial breast and/or ovarian cancer and 2/69 (2.9 %) in breast/thyroid cancer. No variant ATM carriers were found among the other cancer cases. Excluding a single case in which both BRCA1 and ATM were mutated, no p53-MCL alterations were observed in BRCA1/2-positive cases. CONCLUSIONS: These data validate p53-MCL as reliable and specific test for germline ATM variants, confirm ATM as breast cancer susceptibility gene, and highlight a possible association with breast/thyroid cancers. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13046-016-0410-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.